Whether the personal qualifications required for appointment to an EMB are detailed in electoral law generally depends on whether the EMB is expert-based or multiparty-based. For multiparty EMBs, it is more usual that political parties use their own criteria for appointing their representatives to the EMB, such as

• seniority in the political party hierarchy,
• political party membership,
• or professional qualification.

There are some multiparty EMBs for which the law defines criteria for members' qualifications ,such as

• not being a party activist or
• not having held political office recently.

In Burkina Faso and Mozambique, for example, members of the multiparty EMB are by law expected to be professionally qualified and to carry out their work with integrity, independence, and impartiality. This means that political parties are obliged to nominate candidates who meet the qualifications of non-partisanship and independence. Such nominees are in many cases eminent members of the community rather than members of the political parties which nominated them.

In the case of expert-based EMBs, the electoral law may define an extensive set of personal qualifications for EMB members.Alternatively, the law may rely on its definition of the EMB’s expected behaviour and functions to define the qualities of EMB members to be appointed.

It is usual to expect EMB members to meet the criteria of professional competence and political neutrality. In some countries, professional qualifications include legal training and experience, especially for the chair, who in many cases must be a judge or a judge or former judge or somebody qualified for senior judicial appointment. In some cases, EMB members must have a law degree or university-level law education, while in others, members of the EMB must have at least a university degree. Other formal requirements for EMB membership would generally include citizenship, and often include age.

The manner in which EMB members are nominated for appointment may influence the type of person chosen, which may discriminate in favour of or against certain sectors of society. For example, in Indonesia in 2001, it appears that the initial nominations for potential members of the new EMB were sought solely from distinguished academics: thus the bulk of the persons nominated for consideration as members of the EMB were also academics. Apparently open processes may hide a more controlled environment of appointment to EMBs. For example, in 1999, the law on the EMB in Azerbaijan required that half the EMB members be appointed by the legislature and half by the president. With the president’s party totally controlling the legislature, this resulted in a nominally non-partisan but in reality government-influenced EMB.

While some electoral laws specify that EMB members must follow a certain occupation (e.g. all judges and/or eminent legal practitioners), few specify any appropriate mix of experience or skills. Where qualifications are required, these are generally legal. In the corporate world, a company with activities as large and broad as an EMB’s would be unlikely to have a narrowly focused board.

In some countries, the electoral law identifies persons who may not be appointed as members of the EMB. For many Independent or Mixed Model EMBs, this includes incompatibilities of position – for example members may not be a member/recent member of a political party, an elected representative of the people, or concurrently hold a government position. Other barriers to EMB membership, such as health qualifications, may allow hidden discrimination.

For a comparative table on “Qualifications Stated in Electoral Law for Appointment to Four Recently Reformed ‘Expert’-Based EMBs”, see bar on the right hand side.